An Articulatory Study of Preboundary Lengthening in Interaction with Lexical Tones in Mandarin Chinese

Abstract

An Articulatory study of preboundary lengthening in interaction with lexical tones in Mandarin Chinese Hongmei Li Department of English Language & Literature Graduate School of Hanyang University This dissertation research explores preboundary lengthening (PBL) of CV monosyllabic words in Mandarin Chinese. Specifically, the dissertation examines kinematic characteristics of the lip closing gesture for the consonants /p, m/, the lip opening and the tongue lowering gestures for the vowel /a/ in /pa, ma/ contexts, focusing on their kinematic variations conditioned by boundary, lexical tones, and focus-induced prominence by using an electromagnetic articulography (EMA). The results indicate that the lip closing gesture for constriction formation for bilabial consonants /p, m/, which is distant from the prosodic juncture, showed no significant PBL effect. Moreover, a reduction was found in displacement and peak velocity, which showed less robust boundary effect in the phrase-final than in the phrase-medial position. The boundary effect, however, was evident in all dimensions for the lip opening gesture into the vowel /a/, which is proximal to the prosodic juncture. The lip opening gesture was longer in duration phrase-finally than phrase-medially, which was accompanied by larger displacement with a slowing down. For tonal effects on PBL, no significant interactions between boundary and tone were observed in Tone 2 (Low-High rising) in reference to Tone 1 (High-level) across all the conditions, indicating the PBL effects were comparable between Tone 2 and Tone 1. However, significant interactions between boundary and tone were found for Tone 3 (Low-dipping) and Tone 4 (High-Low falling) in both the temporal and spatial dimensions. The interaction was due to the boundary effect being more robust in Tone 3 and Tone 4 compared to Tone 1. Tone 3 and Tone 4 demonstrated temporal expansion that was accompanied by spatial expansion with no slowing down phrase-finally. It is presumably because the longer time facilitates the realization of the complex Tone 3 and Tone 4. Furthermore, the more robust lengthening in Tone 3, attributed to the interaction between boundary and tone, was further augmented under focus. As for the focus effects on PBL, robust lengthening effects were found phrase- finally compared to phrase-medially in both focused and unfocused conditions. However, significant interactions between boundary and focus were observed for the lip opening gesture for the vowel. With the absence of focus, the lip opening gesture was longer and larger in the phrase-final compared to the phrase-medial positions, with no change in peak velocity. With the presence of focus, the opening gesture was longer, slower, but not larger in displacement phrase-finally than phrase-medially. Regarding the tongue lowering gesture for the vowel /a/, significant PBL effects were also found, which were accompanied by larger displacement with no change in peak velocity phrase-finally than phrase-medially. For the tonal effects on PBL, Tone 2, in reference to Tone 1, exhibited no notable boundary and tone interactions. However, significant interactions between boundary and tone were observed for Tone 3 and Tone 4, but these were confined solely to the temporal dimension. Notably, the PBL effects were more robust in Tone 3 and Tone 4 when compared to Tone 1. Presumably, a longer time is required for the realization of the complex Tone 3 and Tone 4. Moreover, the robust lengthening in the complex tones, attributable to the boundary and tone interaction, was further expanded under focus. As for the focus effects on PBL, robust lengthening effects were found phrase-finally compared to phrase-medially in both focused and unfocused conditions. However, significant interactions between boundary and focus were observed in both the temporal and spatial dimensions, which stemmed from the fact that the more robust boundary effects were observed in the absence of focus than in the presence of focus. Overall, the results of this dissertation research suggest that the PBL effects in Mandarin Chinese are generally in line with the cross-linguistic tendency of temporal slowing down before a prosodic juncture, but they are intricately modulated by other linguistic factors in a language-specific way. Particularly, the results imply that PBL is fine- tuned by lexical tones and focus-induced prominence, which is arguably driven by the phonological needs for maximizing tonal contrast when licensed by prosodic structure – i.e., at the phrase-final position. The results are also discussed under the assumption that tones can be represented as gestures, and in terms of how the PBL effects observed in this study are accounted for by the π-gesture theory.